Nicaraguan Catholics Mark Holy Week

The Catholics of Nicaragua celebrated the Via Crucis restricted to the surroundings of the churches, given the government ban that has been in force for two years on traditional street processions.

The Holy Week celebrations took place in the midst of tensions between the Catholic Church and the government of Daniel Ortega, after the arrest of about 20 clerics during the Christmas and New Year festivities, released on January 14 and sent to Rome, after an agreement with the Vatican.

Relations between the government and the Church deteriorated in the 2018 anti government protests, which left more than 300 dead, according to the UN. The president considered them an attempted coup d'état sponsored by Washington and supported by a sector of the clergy.

The police must authorize all public activities, including religious activities.

"I believe that the important thing is not so much how far we can walk, but how we walk. Big things sometimes come in small vessels," Cardinal Leopoldo Brenes, who led the viacrucis in the cathedral, said from Managua.

Among the priests that the government released were two bishops, including Monsignor Rolando Álvarez - a strong critic of Ortega who had been detained since August 2022. Last October, 12 other detained clerics had already been released and also sent to Rome.

On February 29, a group of UN human rights experts said in Geneva that the repression of all real or imagined opposition in Nicaragua "has become more subtle" and targets "university students, indigenous peoples, Afro-descendant peoples, peasants and members of the Catholic Church and other Christian denominations".

By rejecting the report, the Ortega government stated that it lacks credibility.